According to the Obama administration, the Islamic State is committing genocide against certain religious minority groups — excluding Christian minorities. But ISIS is on record saying that its eradication of Christians is due to their religious identity.

The Obama administration's rejection of the word "genocide" fits a familiar pattern.

When asked about the plight of Christians under ISIS, Colonel Steve Warren said "We've seen no specific evidence of a specific targeting toward Christians."

Although Christians number 10% of Syria's population, only 2% of refugees accepted into the U.S. from there are Christian. (The majority — almost 98% — are Sunni Muslims, the same sect to which ISIS belongs and thus are not persecuted.)

Update: Hours after the publication of this article media sources reported that, "The Islamic State is committing genocide against Yazidis, Christians and Shiite Muslims in Iraq and Syria, Secretary of State John Kerry declared on Thursday [today].... Kerry's decision was welcomed by lawmakers and faith-based advocacy groups who have lobbied for months to ensure that Christians would be included among the genocide victims of the Islamic State." Despite this welcomed news, a review of the Obama administration's original rejection of the term "genocide" — conceding only now after the House of Representatives voted 393 to 0 on a resolution that does describe Christians as victims of genocide — as well as any number of previous administration biases against Christian minorities in the Islamic world are all chronicled in the following article and remain instructive.

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According to the Obama administration, the Islamic State is committing genocide against certain religious minority groups — excluding Christian minorities. During a February 29 press briefing, White House spokesman Josh Earnest was asked: "Is the Islamic State carrying out a campaign of genocide against Syria's Christians?" He replied:

Well, we have long expressed our concerns with the tendency of -- well, not a tendency -- a tactic employed by ISIL to slaughter religious minorities in Iraq and in Syria. You'll recall at the very beginning of the military campaign against ISIL that some of the first actions that were ordered by President Obama, by the United States military, were to protect Yazidi religious minorities that were essentially cornered on Mt. Sinjar by ISIL fighters. We took those strikes to clear a path so that those religious minorities could be rescued.

Due to the obvious equivocation — it is unclear how Obama's efforts "to protect Yazidi religious minorities" answers a question about persecuted Christians — the question was repeated: "But you're not prepared to use the word 'genocide' yet in the situation [regarding Christians]?"

Earnest's response:

My understanding is the use of that word involves a very specific legal determination that has at this point not been reached.

What is this "very specific legal determination" that encompasses Yazidis but excludes Christians? The Islamic State's treatment of Christians would seem to fit under the UN's definition of "genocide":

Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;...

The Islamic State has also been responsible for "deliberately inflicting on the group [Christians] conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part." ISIS has placed these "conditions of life" — more literally known in Islamic doctrine as the "Conditions of Omar" — on Christians. They included a number of humiliations and debilitations — from the suppression of Christian worship to the extortion of money (jizya) — a "protection" tax designed to "encourage" Christians to convert to Islam or flee.

Due to all these indicators, many groups and rights activists believe that ISIS's treatment of Christians "fits the definition of ethnic cleansing," in the words of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial. A European Parliament resolution adopted in April 2015 stated that "Christians are the most persecuted religious group. ... according to data the number of Christians killed every year is more than 150,000."

Most recently, on March 14, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a resolution that "pressures the Obama administration to officially declare the Islamic State's bloodshed against Christians, Yazidis and other groups, including the Kurds, as 'genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.'"

The resolution passed 393 to 0.

Even so, the Obama administration's rejection of the word "genocide" fits a familiar pattern:

When asked about the plight of Christians under ISIS, Colonel Steve Warren said "We've seen no specific evidence of a specific targeting toward Christians."

Although Christians number 10% of Syria's population, only 2% of refugees accepted into the U.S. from there are Christian. (The majority of refugees — almost 98% — are Sunni Muslims, the same sect to which ISIS belongs and thus are not persecuted.)

When inviting scores of Muslim representatives, the State Department has repeatedly denied visas to solitary Christian representatives.

When a few persecuted Iraqi Christians crossed the border into the U.S., they were thrown in prison for several months and then sent back to the war zone.

When persecuted Coptic Christians planned on joining Egypt's anti-Muslim Brotherhood revolution of 2013, the Obama administration, in the person of Ambassador Anne Patterson, counseled them not to.

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11 Reader Comments

Bo • Mar 21, 2016 at 09:37

I am not religious myself but when I saw videos of Muslim Brotherhood slaughtering Copts in Egypt and similar videos from Syria I was disgusted. I have been trying to make priests and pastors aware of this but they are busy with welcoming Muslim so-called refugees. They say we shouldn't point out certain groups guilty of this. Well it makes them at least feel uncomfortable and they should be and also ashamed. Talk to your church about it and tell them you don't want to support a church anymore that isn't protecting human rights. Talk to them anyhow and tell them it is a shame. None of the churches in Sweden talks about this. Everybody is so hard trying to be politically correct.

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Allan L. • Mar 18, 2016 at 10:54

Earnest's tongue must be so twisted that he has to hire a Chiropractor to untwist it every night.

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Sarfraz Andrew • Mar 18, 2016 at 05:08

I am Sarfraz Andrew CEO & President Reliance Welfare Foundation in Pakistan working with Christians in Pakistan. We face religious discrimination and legal discrimination in Pakistan.

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Russell • Mar 18, 2016 at 00:40

By this the USA has declared war on Jesus and sits by as ISIS kills us in its quest to destroy Christianity. Everything the US Admin does under Obama is pro-Islam, anti-Israel, anti-Christian and anti-God.

When confronting Saul on the Damascus road, Jesus said -- "why are you persecuting ME" (the caps are mine).

This is a war that the USA will not win, but where are the demonstrations, protests, warnings and calls for repentance from the Christians. Are the Christians asleep?

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Mike • Mar 17, 2016 at 20:56

Muslims are to kill Christians who do not convert to Islam. Then can there even be such a thing as a Christian genocide to a Muslim? Why can someone not call killing of Christians a genocide? Is growing up with Muslims enough to prevent one from doing so? Should one unable to do so be suspect of being a Muslim or too much influenced by Islam in their earlier associations and upbringing?

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Roger Marsh • Mar 17, 2016 at 17:06

The reluctance of Obama's democrats to support people identified as Christian should be an alarm bell to the American voting public. Although many atrocities have been committed in the name of Christ through the centuries of the Church age, Bible-believing, born-again Christians are truly people of peace. For them, martyrdom is a badge of honor, but not one to be sought out. Martyrdom does not entail killing people created in the image of God for the sake of a religion. "Do not kill" is still a commandment, not a suggestion. God will be the final judge and woe to any country who turns their collective backs on Christians and Jews. "How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood."

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David Hersch • Mar 17, 2016 at 10:51

No, just mass murder from this Muslim sycophant and enabler. People are being killed en mass and Obama fiddles with semantics while people die and are killed simply because they are Christian, not Islamic or not of the ISIS flavour of Islam. Obama is simply amoral.

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Hanna • Mar 17, 2016 at 07:25

If this is not a Genocide, then I don't know what is. What's more --- Europe is marching in the same direction. So, while Christians are being murdered around the world, President Obama is making excuses and playing political correct word games. Who cares what it is called? Someone should explain to Mr. Obama the word Genocide, along with a few other facts, like who cares about the actual number of the murdered Christians? The fact is --- THEY ARE BEING WIPED OUT IN THE MIDDLE EAST and no one gives a hoot. "Luckily" for the Jews, most of them were "merely" kicked out --- that was before ISIS. As for Barbarians, they can now turn on each other --- good luck! Thank you Raymond Ibrahim and Gatestone.

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lyn uzelac • Mar 17, 2016 at 07:14

Obama's support for the Muslims has been apparent since his election and he is unlikely to spoil his pro-Muslim record at this late date. The Jews and Christians will get no help from him but it raises one nasty question -- where does Hillary Clinton stand in this debacle or will she change hats to get into the White House?

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David Davidian • Mar 17, 2016 at 07:04

﻿The House's 383-to-0 vote to call ISIS's "mass murder, beheadings, crucifixions, rape, torture, enslavement, and the kidnapping of children, among other atrocities," genocide yet it doesn't have the courage to call the Turkish extermination of the Armenians a genocide. One could call this political hypocrisy, but then we would not want to be redundant. Let's see how the USSD is going to address their annual equivocation regarding the genocide of the Armenians in the face of the House's vote on ISIS.

Apparently, some mass murders of entire ethnic or religious groups are more genocidal than others. "Never again" rings as hollow as the political expediency it represents.

Yerevan, Armenia

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Albert • Mar 17, 2016 at 05:36

Barack Hussein has no problem calling The Muslim Brotherhood "Moderate" and pushing for it to be part of the government of Egypt despite it being the grand father of all Islamic terror group. Yet Christian churches are burning all over the Middle east, Christian women raped. Their men slaughtered. Soon there will not be Christians left anywhere in the Middle East except in Israel where they are protected by law and thriving. How can Barack Hussein not raise his voice for Christians and yet be an advocate for the invented "Palestinian" nation. Why is the President of the USA on the side of Islamic terror? Why does he not recoginze genocides by Muslim such as the Kurdish genocide going on in south east Turkey. Christians in Turkey mostly gone already as they are going away everywhere else in the area. Genocides not one genocide going on as Barack Hussein is silent about Christian suffering.

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